Evidence that the defendant suffered from a mental disease or defect is admissible to prove whether the defendant had the kind of culpable mental state required for commission of the offense charged.
Ark. Code Ann. § 5-2-303
Admissibility of evidence to show mental state
Applied in 7 court decisions — leading case Bankston v. State (2005)
Most recently applied in Edwards v. State (October 2015)
Acts 1975, No. 280, § 602; A.S.A. 1947, § 41-602.
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Current official text: Arkansas General Assembly. Digitized from the UniCourt Code Improvement Commission public-domain capture. Reproduced from public-domain Arkansas statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.